I have found many books at my local
library that are very kid friendly. By taking a look at the call
numbers I found them all around: 972.** you should be able to find
them easily enough using this number. I looked in our Juvenile section
and found quite a few that would work for the age group I am teaching.
Take the time to go look at what you have available at your local
library and work around those!!

Hands of a child Maya, Inca, and Aztec project pack I am using the following mini-books from Hands of a Child’s Project Pact: Activities: 8 and 18.
Keep in mind that this study is merely about the Myths and beliefs
only. I do recommend getting this project pack and working through the
rest of it as your time permits. It’s a fabulous study and would really
fill out all the bits and pieces. Below are some answer cards I created
to go with these activities. I would think you could create the
minibooks or at least something that would work. I will not provide
these, as I am using HOC’s project pack.

Make an Aztec or Maya MaskMasks are a large part of both the Mayan and Aztec cultures. They
used masks for rituals and ceremonies. The masks represent which ever
God or Goddess is being honored. For this project you have a few
options. Below is a page that you can print out and color, or cut out
small squares in various shades of paper to create a mosaic. You can
also do a paper mache art project (Link below) if you have time to
spread the project over several days.

I highly recommend adding on paper squares that you can use as mosaic
pieces to make it look more like a Maya or Aztec piece. Or if you are
doing this at home, It would be great to actually use mosaic tiles if
you have some handy or can purchase them inexpensively.

Maya Myth Comic StripThis comic strip tells the story of the two
Twin Heroes. It is just a fun way to teach sequence of events. There is
another use for this project to that would be great for older kids in
higher grades. The original posting has the comic strip and then it has
you have the students create their own comic strips to tell a myth. This
will be too much for my class however since we only have an hour.

I have changed up the original posting just
a bit to fit my purposes. I have cropped off the “create your own”
section and added in cutting lines. But other than that, it’s the same
as the original. You can download it here:

CalendarsThe Maya and Aztec people had a very amazing calendar system. Both
had multiple systems that worked together and both had one system that
had exactly 365 days and one that had 260 days. Unfortunately I have had
much difficulty finding graphics to create the mini-book. I have found 2
sources that will help with this, however they are not free resources,
but ones that I bought over the years. Below is PART of a mini-book. To
do the entire thing you really need the 2 resources. They can be found
at CurrClick.com

The first is from Evan-Moore Publications: History Pockets Ancient civilizations:

I’ve made the second wheel for the maya calendar (The Haab Wheel) And
I’ve made a cover for the mini-book. For this mini-book I intend to
have 3 pieces of cardstock with them stapled together at one end and
layered at the other. The words Mayan and Aztec written on the exposed
ends.

Make a Mayan Codex:
The codex is an important piece of Maya
History. It includes many of the God’s and much of what their day to day
life entailed. Basically, their culture, their history and their
future. Not only did the Maya People have a codex, but so did the Aztec
People as well. The following project will help illustrate the
importance to both cultures.

Original Pages: The original creation was created by the webmaster of LACAMBALAM. They are hand drawn & painted beautifully. They have provided the
re-creation for free download. You can see/get the originals here: http://www.angelfire.com/dc/dresdencodex/
There is an explanation page on who some of the god’s are, but the
pictures are not showing up and you might be able to decipher who is who
by the descriptions. (CLICK the “This is my: Dresden Codex” link to
get to the explanations) I have sent an email asking for the links to
be fixed, but it may be a while.

This page has many explanations of the
different God’s. I have not taken the time to go through each one to see
if they are in the codex, but I THINK I have figured out a few of them.
. . MAYBE!!!

I have taken the originals and adjusted them and created a mini-book for the project folder. You can find the pdf available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?4odcbo7n1648px0
The changes to the originals is merely a smaller size, a cover, a back
page with information about the codex. One thing to keep in mind is the
Maya People read from right to left. So the first page would be to the
right side of the codex, not the left.

Comparing A GodThe article on this website does a fantastic job of explaining the
similarities and differences of Viracocha, Kukulkan, and Quetzalcoatl.
They are in many ways exactly the same god with different names. The
following activity will help your student(s) to compare the legends of
these 3 Gods.